The Year's Most Popular Movies Instructed Us to Consume the Wealthy Once More. We Continue to Ignore the Message.

A familiar theme runs through many of 2025's blockbuster hits. It's an idea that stretches all the way back to the time of silent film comedy. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the villain is a envious, ruthless billionaire exploiting his immense fortune to tarnish Earth's superhero icon while controlling world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a privileged biotech mogul squandering a fortune to cast the heroes into a prehistoric arena to boost his wealth. In *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a dynasty of extremely affluent lynxes who stole a well-meaning mother's beneficial creation and pinned the blame on her for murder, solely for their own profit.

A Lineage of Film Class Warfare

In *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate embodies a affluent bad guy controlling a TV network that profits hugely by preying upon and eliminating people enduring extreme hardship, while leveraging AI forgeries and a well-honed propaganda machine to label them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn't highlight class division quite that directly, but its antagonists enjoy conspicuous opulence while exploiting and abusing Oz's poorest citizens, pushing them into unemployment and toward imprisonment or servitude. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one film, contrasts the scrappy residents of a struggling farm town against condescending upper classes who live in extravagant gold-and-jade palaces in the sky. Remarkably, the agreeably goofy farcical update *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plot to trigger planetary doom — to make money, naturally.

There is little especially new in a string of movies assuming as fact that the wealthy have disproportionate control, are devoid of conscience, and a bottomless, entitled appetite for increased fortune. "Rich people are villains and everyday folks are heroes" as a theme goes back to the dawn of cinema, with the Little Tramp's adventures contrasting his perpetually impoverished Little Tramp character against corporate bosses, bosses, and clueless rich men. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that updated that very premise for the era of the rapacious, destructive entrepreneurial bad guy, the whole legacy of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that wealth is at odds with fundamental decency, and applaud the defusing, downfall, and sometimes demise of elite figures.

The Release That Changes Nothing

However, somehow, we never get around to taking down the wealthy. Whenever lawmakers follow a new mass shooting event by blaming violent video games, I roll my eyes, because if people really were that susceptible — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the societal mindset — undoubtedly American society wouldn’t still worship billionaires. Still the news demonstrates constantly that a significant portion of Americans subconsciously associate wealth with intelligence and importance, even after decades of cinema's biggest movies communicating a contradictory message.

If anything, it seems like the constant stream of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has provided us with a safety outlet that impedes substantive reform. Provided with a regular dose of mostly happily-ever-after stories where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can finish the film satisfied about justice being served. These films are like moral fairy tales, suggesting that society is just, and that resourceful individuals will weed out any bad apples among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who lifted themselves through sheer effort.

A More Pointed Edge in 2025

Even though 2025's movies do not break new ground in that respect, they do follow some modern developments among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more furious, sharper, more direct, and observably more lethal. It is no longer satisfactory nowadays to see rich people gain some humility in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel rich individuals were eliminated by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face directly on national television (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a wine opener (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an rising rival (*Him*).

"Almost none of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the packed into a police car finale, possibly since it’s become so apparent that affluent individuals operate under different standards, and are very likely to negotiate their release."

The "off to face justice" outcome no longer satisfies anymore. Conversely, these villains are prone to die at the conclusion of their movies, often in notably horrific, fitting ways.

Significant Exclusions

A few stories differ, of course. The iconic villain in *Superman* is simply disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up confined to the computer world, teasing that he is being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is reformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid